In Part 1 I looked at working out what to remove and update to an Android phone. One of the neat things I’ve found with the Google Photos, is if you re-upload the whole lot, it works out what it has already uploaded and will only upload new images.

This time, I look at the Ubuntu environment on your PC. At this point it’s a good idea to take a full backup (and we’ll use that later as well.)

Next in Part 3, I go overs some options for using Google Drive, cleaning up music files and removing Ubuntu One from your phone and PC.

1. Deleting the uploaded images from your phone

Ubuntu One Files for Android >Settings > Upload photos to is the option for uploading images to a folder on your PC. At this point you have to decide if you want to keep those on your PC since you’ve now uploaded all of them to Google Pictures from your phone. (And yes, I call my phone hung, so that’s what I named the directory.)

Confirm where Ubuntu One Files uploaded photos

2. Log out of Ubuntu One on your PC

We want to stop Ubuntu One synchronising your PC from here on. This is you saying goodbye to Ubuntu One. (Well purge it later in Part 3.)

From the Ubuntu One icon in the task bar, select Open Ubuntu One

Make sure all the items in Sync Locally? are checked.

Make sure you can see the green check mark in the top right with File Sync is up-to-date. (If they aren’t synced then you haven’t downloaded all the available files, so you need to have another cup of coffee.)

Click Disconnect

Checking synchronisation and disconnection from Ubuntu One

At this point, your PC will no longer synchronise with Ubuntu One. So, it’s really important to make sure you’re confident that you have downloaded everything.

3. Move music you purchased from Ubuntu One into ~/Music

Music purchased from Ubuntu One resides in ~/.ubuntuone/Purchased From Ubuntu One/artist/album. I store my Music in a different structure and naming convention for compilation albums, e.g. ~/Music/various/album so I had to do a bit of work to move them around and clean them up. This step really depends on how you store and manage your music, but somehow you need to move your music files into ~/Music. We’ll look at cleaning up the ID3 tags in your music files in Part 3.

4. Install Google Play Music

Unlike Google Drive, Google have a Linux .deb package ready for install with their Music tool. And unlike Google’s instructions, I don’t like installing .deb files directly from a download. So, we’ll do as everyone else has done and install it for apt-get to grab:

At this point it will tell you how many tracks you have, and how much free space you have (up to 20,000), click Next

For Do you want to automatically upload songs that you add you your Music folder in the future? click Yes (this is helpful later in Part 3 when you start to clean up your Music files)

Click Next for the helpful informational page

Go get a cup of coffee while it scans your Music folder

Click Close at the end if you don’t want to go to the Music Player (which is the webpage for Google Play Music)

The upload of songs can take quite a while depending on how much data you have. And when I say quite a while, I’m talking days. Many days. So, enjoy your coffee while we go over the next steps.

5. Install tools for Google Drive: grive-tools

Unlike Google Play for Music, Google Drive does not have a native Linux tool, yet. However, we have grive-tools which we’ll install. It isn’t as feature rich as Ubuntu One as it only syncs one directory: ~/Google Drive (but there’s a paid version with the extra bits.) It’s PPA maintained by The Fan Club. (And really, how can you go wrong with that name?)

Run these commands in a shell (don’t you just love my – do this and don’t ask questions steps?)